Monday, July 28, 2014

This summer, many kids have started
their first full-time jobs. They look so cute and optimistic on the subway and
carrying those Panera or Chipotle bags back to their desks during their lunch
hours. They still, with great earnestness, use the term “lunch hour.”

When I began my first 9-to-5 office job,
my parents and other mentors gave me stellar tips on how to navigate the new
terrain. Here’s some of what they didn’t convey:

*If you microwave popcorn in the floor
kitchen, it’ll stink up most of the floor for at least 20 minutes. People will
follow the scent to your work station and expect you to share.

*Be very afraid when someone asks
whether you’re a team player.

*Street smarts beat book smarts.

*Ignore any list of how much $$ the rest
of your “team” makes, even if it’s perched atop a fax machine you’re
about to use. It will only infuriate you.

*Nepotism is alive and well, beating out
street smarts and book smarts.

*Every time you stay at a five-star
hotel on an all-expenses-paid business trip, leave a cash tip for the
housekeepers.

*When a team member has massively pissed
you off, don’t take deep breaths – take a walk. A brisk one. Around the block.
A few times, if necessary. Swing those arms. It does wonders.

*Many high-functioning alcoholics and
cokeheads are lit during the workday.
When that manic colleague with perpetually dilated pupils claims all the
shallow sniffing (in the middle of January) is due to a pollen allergy, let
skepticism get the better of you.

*Use up all of your paid vacation and
personal days.

*Aside from the beach, when it’s above
90 degrees and humid on a weekday, there are few spots more comfortable than an
over-air-conditioned office. Savor it, and just smile and nod when You-Know-Who
blames the latest round of sniffing on that frosty air.

Monday, July 21, 2014

While doing research on Angela Davis for a former
professor’s book years ago, I came across documents detailing daily menus from Davis’s
inmate days at San Quentin. Baked salmon loaves and coconut pudding. Eggs prepared
a number of different ways. Meals sounding so tantalizing and balanced they
came as a shock to someone who had been under the impression that prisoners,
especially in the ‘70s, were on the bread-and-water plan. Is this for real? I thought. Prisonerseat better than me? Since then, I’ve longed
to meet an ex-con who could back this up. One equipped to answer queries about texture,
portion sizes, and whether this “coffee” includes unlimited refills.

The other day, I walked past a guy on a bench. He
smiled, I smiled. Smiling turned into waving (music, either
Tupac or the Dixie Chicks, blasted in my ears at the time), and I eventually
pulled out an earbud to hear what he was saying. He was mostly saying that he
got out of prison hours earlier, after serving a 10-year sentence, and was in
the early stages of enjoying his freedom in the balmy Central Park air, despite
having no family or friends. Now, is that
for real? The prison system is allowed to just release people out into the
open, without confirming they have a place to go? (He said his guards looked
the other way during prisoner-on-prisoner rape. A
recent New York Times article exposed
local correction officers’ brutality against inmates.)

Pulling out the other earbud, I asked what
I’ve wanted inside, in-person information on for years: “How was the food? Tell
me everything, let’s start with salmon.” Among other descriptions, he said other
inmates prepared the food - they spat into it and worms crawled out.

Monday, July 14, 2014

Earlier this
year I read I Am Malala, a memoir
that hugely affected me. Westerners who aren’t intimately familiar with the
developing world take lots for granted, such as clean water and not having to worry
about getting beheaded on the way out the door in the morning.

Malala Yousafzai
is the teenage girl from Pakistan’s Swat Valley who not only continued going to
school after the Taliban forbid girls from doing so, but (along with her
feminist father) became known as a girls’ education activist, when it would
have been safer and easier to put up and shut up. Like many others (from East
to West), the Taliban finds strong women deeply threatening, so one day in 2012
they shot Malala in the head (where the mind is located) while she rode the bus
home from school. She survived, now lives in England with her parents and younger
brothers, and still speaks out. She turned 17 the day before yesterday, spending
her birthday weekend in Nigeria, comforting schoolgirls who escaped from their April 15th kidnappers and the parents
of schoolgirls who remain missing.

Today is the
second annual Malala Day. How can you
celebrate? How about by showing more consideration toward people who don’t live
like you; developing more self-awareness; supporting universal preschool and an
increased minimum wage; contributing something useful to the society that
exists beyond your own insular group; thinking of passivity as your worst enemy
but thinking carefully before you act.

Monday, July 7, 2014

After this
weekend, I see why so many creative New Yorkers move upstate to the small town
of Hudson once they marry, start having kids, find more mobile means of
employment, or simply want to invest in a multi-level piece of property without
tempting bankruptcy. It’s roomier, quieter, friendlier, cheaper, only 2 hours from
the city, less than 2 hours from the mountains.

You can walk down
the main drag to the sound of Jerry Garcia’s voice drifting out a front door, a
few buildings down from some Jamaican patties. Although Hudson’s main drag is (blessedly)
named something other than Main
Street, it does include a hair salon that could not resist.

This time of
year, the main drag is a flag-happy strip.

Those low-flying
flags look charming until the wind gets gusting and, one by one, they start furling
and unfurling, slapping you upside the head as you stroll.

I had the most
delicious burger of my life at a farm-to-table diner called Grazin’, the first animal
welfare-approved restaurant in the world,
not long after standing centimeters away from a man with an intricately tattooed
neck, shaved head, throat, and face. Eat
your heart out Michelangelo, this icon and the artist(s) who inked him have got
you beat.